Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

This is a church dating from the 14th and 15th centuries, substantially restored in 1845. It is built of limestone rubble with ashlar dressings, with plain-tile and sheet-metal roofs.

The church comprises an aisled nave, chancel, central tower and south porch. The 14th-century chancel features two-light side windows and a three-light east window, all with Reticulated tracery, and a priest's doorway to the south with its original medieval door. The roof is steep-pitched with a gable parapet. The parapetted south aisle has similar Decorated windows to the west and west of the porch, while to the east and east of the porch are 15th-century windows with three lights under four-centred arches. The 15th or early 16th-century porch has a wide four-centred arched outer doorway with ancient double-leaf doors beneath a small cusped niche; the parapet string features corner heads and a gargoyle. The four-centred arched 15th-century south doorway has a richly-moulded rectangular surround with label and displays quatrefoils and mouchettes in the spandrels. This door dates from the 13th century and has elaborate hinges. The 15th-century north aisle contains two-light windows with Perpendicular tracery to the north and east, and a blocked north doorway. The nave has square-headed 15th-century clerestorey windows and a west doorway similar to that on the south, but retains a late 13th-century west window of three lights with Intersecting tracery. The crenellated three-stage central tower, now flanked by the aisles, shows the roofline of former transepts and has two-light arched belfry openings. At the north-east angle is a two-stage circular stair turret with a short octagonal spirelet, which may date to the 13th century or earlier.

The interior chancel retains a section of earlier string course on the north wall and its seven-canted medieval roof has coupled rafters with king posts rising to upper collars. The central tower contains four 14th-century arches of two chamfered orders dying into single-chamfered responds. The 15th-century nave has a two-bay arcade with delicate cruciform piers and a stone missal desk built into the north-east respond. The contemporary roof features moulded tie beams, purlins and wallplates braced from moulded posts.

The church contains 13th-century wall paintings on the west and south outer wall faces of the tower, and 17th-century paintings on the tower and the west wall of the nave. 14th and 15th-century stained-glass panels and figures survive in the north aisle and in some tracery lights of the chancel windows. The chancel north window dates from 1895 and is by J. Hardman, while other 19th-century glass appears in the chancel, west window of the nave, and east and west windows of the south aisle.

Fittings include a 12th-century tub font, 15th-century bench pews in the nave and aisles, a 17th-century pulpit with arched panels and tester, a medieval chest, and a 17th-century bier in the porch. A wall monument in the chancel to Anne Croke (died 1609) features a brass engraving and inscription in a Classical stone frame beneath an achievement. Several plain 18th-century wall tablets are located in the aisles, and early 19th-century lozenge-shaped floor slabs commemorate members of the Croke family of Studley Priory.